100 Best Stocks 2007 (100 Best Stocks You Can Buy) (ISBN 159337707X)

Excellent Reference book:
This is a great place to start if you are looking for stocks to buy. It gives a great breakdown of a stocks 8 year history of: >Revenue >Net Income >Earnings per share >Dividends per Share >Highest and Lowest stock price for each year It gives you the basic profile of the company,the shortcomings to bear in mind,and reasons to buy. It is great for ideas on companies to buy with a great overview of the stocks history. It divides stocks into its industry, sector, and category. This book will be useful to use to understand and create a diversified portfolio of individual stocks. But be warned of three things: 1). Use this book as a history book not a newspaper, go to Quotes/Yahoo or marketcenter.com for up to date information. 2). These are all large cap stocks, this book is not for investors looking for small cap stocks. 3) This is a basic beginners book, great for them, but an experienced investor will already have this information from other periodicals and tools. I personally like to use these books each year to look for value stocks, I have had great fortune buying the stocks that appear in these books that are trading at P/E multiples between 15-20. Also buy these stocks at or near their 52 week low. These companies are solid, buy them when the prices cycle down.

The 100 Best Stocks You Can Buy 2007:
I do not care for this book at all. I first read parts of it when I was in college (a year ago) studying Finance, and now I have a degree. I know that the process of choosing stocks (not to mention managing a portfolio and other aspects of investing) is much more intricate and complex than the author leads people to believe. The book has about a page or two of information from current analysts' reports about the stock, and he cuts and pastes quotes from these reports to try to educate the reader about why these stocks are buys. At the end of the information for each stock, he lists figures from each company's financial statements so that the reader can pick up on trends that may have occurred in the past, hoping that these trends will continue in the future. Using this book alone to make judgements of what stocks to buy is not wise, becuase no one can make a sound investment decision based solely on the small amount of information the author gives in the book. I don't believe this book is useful for hardly anyone to get educated on which stocks to buy. First, by the time the reader reads this book, the information about each company can already be outdated, so it's imperative that the reader look at other research to stay up to date. Second, the author's data and quotes are only a small fraction of the total information someone needs to make an informed decision on whether or not to invest in the stock. For example, the author never mentions the importanace of understanding the state of the overall economy (which is the largest single factor in whether or not the price will appreciate in the future), never mentions how important the sector or industry's performance is to the performance of the company, never even looks at technical analysis or charts to make judgements, doesn't go into near enough detail when it comes to fundemental analysis.Finally, the author lists stocks as "buys," but never mentions at what price you should pick them up--you never want to buy shares of a company unless they're at the right price, and if the price is too high, it might not be a buy anymore. This goes back to the idea that, by the time you read this book, the information is already out of date. If any reader is confused on why any of these stocks is a buy after reading this book, I can certainly understand why-it's nearly impossible for someone to understand investing with the very small amount of education the author gives the reader on investment principles. I recommend not buying a book on which stocks to buy, but rather first buying a book on the investment process and how to invest, so that you can understand what you're doing. Then go to Standard and Poor's, Value Line, Morningstar, Investor's Business Daily, or other publications to get ideas or picks. Also consider other investments, such as bonds, CDs, real estate, metals, or even currencies. There are many more options out there than just stocks. Finally, don't overlook international investing.

Just a list of 100 stocks, no good explanation of why buy:
This book is essentially a listing of 100 stocks that the author thinks are worth buying. Overall, the book leaves a lot to be desired. The details on any specific stock are too short to base an intelligent decision on. I wish the author had instead limited the list to 25 stocks and provided detailed analysis on why he thinks they are worth my money. He should also have described price points where it makes sense to buy them. The categorization that the author uses are Aggressive Growth, Conservative Growth, Growth & Income, and Income. This was useful, but I would have liked to see classification of these stocks based on industry segments as well so that I could build a diversified portfolio. Of course, that information is available on the Web. My advice: skim this book to find a few companies that interest you, and read details on them at Google or Yahoo financial websites.

One Great Book for Evaluating Stock Options:
John Slatter has once again written a book that will enhance any newby or verteran stock invester. I admire his humor that coincides with usefull information for stock purchasing and other options. I got hooked on his books about 2 years ago and have had to check them out from public libraries to read them, but once I had the chance to purchase his latest version, I had to just to settle my minds peace over it. Thank you once again. E Scott Hollingsworth